At His Command
Joshua Seth puts on Hypnotically Good Show
Center stage of Plachta Auditorium sits a row of twelve black chairs. On them, sit twelve students slumped over in various states of semi-consciousness. Joshua Seth raises a hand in the air and a microphone to his mouth.
“Every word I say is the truth,” he said. “From this point forward in the program, all you hear is the sound of my voice.”
With a snap of his fingers, all the male volunteers begin writhing in agony, believing themselves to be in labor. At the same time, all the female volunteers drop to their knees, ready to help deliver the child. With a look of panic on her face, Okemos junior Lauren Lynn frantically tries to reassure her equally hypnotized compatriots that it’s going to be OK.
“All I was thinking about was ducks,” she said, referring to her state prior to being hypnotized. “Then I was out. I don’t remember anything.”
Tricks like this are just one of many that Seth pulls in his one man traveling show, "HypnoMental." From making volunteers believe they’re able to rap in fluent Japanese, to completely forgetting the number six, nothing is too out of bounds for the showman.
“Depending where I am and what the crowd is like, that’s going to determine what routines I feel like doing and how far I feel like pushing it,” Seth said. “I pushed it pretty far with you guys because I could tell that this crowd was responsive to it.”
At a young age, Seth’s father, a hypnotherapist and psychologist, taught him self-hypnosis for “accelerated learning purposes.” From there, his interest in hypnosis evolved, prompting him to begin stage shows prior to his foray into voice acting.
Describing landing the lead role of Tai on the hit anime series of Digimon as “just getting lucky," Seth eventually left Hollywood once the demands of touring became too much to balance. It was not before lending his voice to more than 60 animes and cartoons, and staring in television shows across the globe.
“I prefer (stage shows) anyway – this is always what I wanted to do,” Seth said. “The energy that you get from a hyped up audience and a live performance, there’s nothing like that.”
Prior to arriving in Mount Pleasant, Seth spent the night before in Florida opening his own nightclub. At 6 a.m. he boarded the first flight to Michigan to not “chance being late," and arrived in Mount Pleasant on the move, setting up for a show which he now calls one of his “all-time favorite campuses”.
“I didn’t fly thousands of miles across the country to come do a show for an empty theatre,” Seth said. “(The theatre) is just the right size and you guys filled it with people who really showed up to have a good time, and that’s what live entertainers are looking for.”
Seth expressed enthusiasm at coming back to Central for another show. If interested further in any of Seth’s stage shows or his work in voice acting, both a website, www.joshuaseth.com, and a Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/officialjoshuaseth, are available for viewing.
